The Stampede

Bringing the News: Student-Run Video Production Broadcast Shown during Advisory

Monday, September 17, 2007 By Brianna Rose

On February 29, the first segment of a new weekly news show aired in advisory classrooms around the school with seniors Richard Yager and Lea Kocurek anchoring. “One of my biggest fears was that people wouldn’t like it,” Kocurek said. “I was also scared that we would get to the day of filming and I wouldn’t know how to start.” On January 29, the school saw the first of what would become many news episodes shown at the beginning of every week. “I thought it was very good and informative,” freshman Zachary Fisher said. “It made me want to see the play I Hate Hamlet because of the clip they showed.” Kocurek and Yager came up with the idea after Cheerleading Sponser Melinda Crook came to the JOTS group to do something for the “Thunder: Kidnapped” story during Homecoming. They have since been working to organize the project and to put it in motion. “I thought it would be a fun project to do and fun for the students to watch,” Kocurek said. “I spent several weeks thinking about all I wanted to include so that when I took my proposal to get it approved, it would be very easy to understand.” The first stop to getting the project underway was the office of Student Activities Director Cara Cooper. “I was very excited to hear about the idea,” Ms. Cooper said. “I think it’s something different for the kids to watch during advisory, and it’s more interactive because the kids get to watch their friends.” The concept then went to Principal Steve Hammerle, who gave the group his support. “My first thought was, where do they find the time to do all this,” Mr. Hammerle said. “I know Lea’s so busy with theater and all the other projects she does for us. But I’m not surprised at all that this group wanted to do this after seeing all the other things I know they’ve done for the school.” The students filmed and produced each episode themselves with little involvement from teachers. “Mr. Murdock has been very supportive, but since we’re not a club exactly, we don’t need a sponsor; we pretty much doing it all ourselves,” Kocurek said. “Everyone is in charge of writing their own script for their segment and we film on our own time with equipment that I already had.” Several other students were involved in the filming of the show, including Alison Garzone on sports, Jacob Shepherd as the weatherman, and Kip Mooney and Matt Cox covering entertainment. “Lea was telling me about it and I asked if I could be involved as an entertainment reporter,” Mooney said. “I’m incredibly excited because entertainment broadcast is something I want to be involved with in the future.” The group usually films at the end of each week or whenever they can fit in the time. “I was okay with starting this project because I was already equipped to film, so getting it done and paid for wasn’t so difficult,” Kocurek said. “I do many video projects for the school and contests because I want to become a filmmaker. I’m trying to get as much experience as I can, so the more projects I do, the better I get.” At the beginning of the filming process, the group faced many obstacles to pulling the project off, including the challenge of finding the information to include in each segment of the show. “We have to come up with story ideas each week,” Yager said. “We also want to do pieces on teachers and students, so we have to find someone who would be interesting to do a story on and get it all done in a week.” The show will be another way for students all over the school to get the information they need in addition to the normal slideshow and the announcements over the intercom. “I’d like to make the announcements more entertaining,” Yager said. “Even though the regular slideshow announcements will still be playing everyday, students might listen more or pay more attention to something like this.” The project will also provide another way for students to get active within the school this year and in years to come. “It takes many people, and I think this will be a great opportunity to get involved,” Mr. Hammerle said. “Lea and Richard will be taking applications later for students who want to continue it. I hope it takes off and continues into the following years and each year it gets tweaked and improves.” Since the first filming, Kocurek has forgotten her nerves and is eager to move forward with the program. “Everybody I talked to said it was really good and that it was better than they thought it was going to be,” Kocurek said. “I didn’t think it was good enough, though. It will get better.”